yep!
and many of em could care less about the plight of the bushies
could be what the judges want to highlight maybe?
1. I'm not sure what the purpose of the award is - ? (make you proud to be Aus according to the govt website)1. Surely that isn't the purpose of this award?
2. I think maybe Australia is moving from a Primary Industry to Secondary - or is that tertiary to Mining!
Lee Kernaghan named Australian of the Year 2008
25 January 2008
Country music legend and a champion of rural Australia, Lee Kernaghan OAM, has been named Australian of the Year 2008 at a ceremony in front of Parliament House in Canberra
About the Australian of the Year Awards
Each year our nation celebrates the achievement and contribution of eminent Australians through the Australian of the Year Awards by profiling leading citizens who are role models for us all. They inspire us through their achievements and challenge us to make our own contribution to creating a better Australia.
There are four award categories:
a. Australian of the Year
b. Senior Australian of the Year (60 years and over)
c. Young Australian of the Year (16 to 25 years)
d. Australia's Local Hero
PS Kernaghan says "Buy Aus" !!Kernaghan 'pumped and ready' to champion bush
Posted 3 hours 9 minutes ago
Updated 2 hours 34 minutes ago
New Australian of the Year Lee Kernaghan says he will be lobbying the Government to pay more attention to the problems of regional Australia.
The country music star says he is delighted with the award, which was presented by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd at a ceremony in Canberra.
"I'm pumped and ready. I appreciate this magnificent honour Australia has given me," he said.
Kernaghan says he will be talking to Mr Rudd about what can be done to help regional Australia and will be encouraging others to support local industries and buy Australian products.
This year's Local Hero award winner, Choir of Hard Knocks founder Jonathan Welch, says he plans to raise the profile of homelessness with Mr Rudd.
"It really takes a level of commitment from all of us to really care about each other," he said.
The Local Hero Award was introduced into the Australian of the Year Awards in 2003. It acknowledges extraordinary contributions made by Australians in their local community.
The Local Hero Award is sponsored by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.
The Hon Kevin Andrews MP, Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, is pleased to be associated with the awards.
"Everyone can be a Local Hero. This award provides an opportunity to say thank you. These are ordinary people who are inspired to make an extraordinary difference in their own community. Their communities and the nation benefit from their efforts."
2008 Jonathon Welch
2007 Shanaka Fernando
2006 Toni Hoffman
2005 Ben Kearney (b.1972)
2004 Donna Carson
2003 Mr Brian Parry AFSM
yep!
and many of em could care less about the plight of the bushies
could be what the judges want to highlight maybe?
I'm not sure exactly how it's chosenI have been thinking about this a bit more. Are you saying that the Australian of the Year should be picked to make a political statement? That would an absolute travesty!
Does he (Lee) make me proud to be an Aussie?I'm not sure exactly how it's chosen
but not really political as such ..
Does he (Lee) make me proud to be an Aussie?
Did Archbishop Peter Hollingworth AO OBE make me proud to be an aussie?
Did Steve Irwin ? - you betcha
And Terri for that matter, just for the fact that she's adopted us.
Does Gillie - ditto
Agree 100%. And I'd add Dr Fiona Wood, for her dedicated work with burns victims.No, I am still cringing about this award. He has been around in the media for years, so if you dont know what he is on about by now, then doesnt that suggest it is an, well, unusual choice?
I dont believe that any religious leaders should be given this honour
Nope
Double Nope. Would they even be considered if there had not been a sad and sudden death? And are we that bad that we should be greatful that she has 'adopted' us?
Yes, he is a great cricketer and sportsperson, but he has received plenty of accolades in his own right, and in remuneration. So ditto for sports people as for religious people! And I do come from a sporting family!
Victor Chen (Heart Surgeon), Frazer (Cervical cancer prevention) Working with the disabled, the sick etc - these are the people who make me proud.
Although, passed on, the work of Fred Hollows is inspirational. His foundation is still doing amazing work.
Prospector;251712 And Julia said:Don't mention Fiona Wood in some medical circles. I spent six weeks earlier this year as a patient in a burns ward in Brisbane. I had a lot of skin grafts. My doctor told me that she had patented her proceedure and the hospital I was in could not afford to use it.
spot on mm, equal first choice with Weary! (and not dissimilar to in many ways) .Although, passed on, the work of Fred Hollows is inspirational.
1. involved in the struggle of Aboriginal land rights and
2. better health . the first Aboriginal medical centre .. provided treatment to more than 450 remote communities.
3. programs in Asia, Africa and South America. He made several trips to Eritrea to train barefoot doctors to perform simple eye surgery
4. Hollows said: 'To my mind, having a care and concern for others is the highest of the human qualities.'
5. He used his tour of honour after the award to argue for an increase in federal aid to developing nations, and
6. for a more energetic approach to youth unemployment. He always tried to challenge people to lead more selfless and dynamic lives.
FRED HOLLOWS (1929 - 1993)
Professor Fred Hollows was an eye doctor (opthalmologist).
In his lifetime Fred gave thousands of people, all over the world, their eyesight back.... born in New Zealand in 1929. His family was religious, and Fred thought he'd like to be a missionary, but he changed his mind after doing some work at a mental hospital.
Fred decided to become a doctor and eventually specialise in eye surgery.
In 1960, Fred got a job in Australia. Five years later he was head of the Eye Department at a Sydney hospital.
Fred always believed strongly in equality for all people. He was told about the need for Aboriginal health services in Sydney. He took up the cause, and helped set up the first Aboriginal Medical Service. There are now more than 60 across Australia.
One thing really shocked Fred. He discovered that almost all Aboriginal people in outback communities had eye diseases. Diseases caused by dirty conditions and poor health. Problems that could be easily avoided.
In the 1970's, he helped launch a national program to attack eye disease in Aboriginal Australians........ the team travelled all over outback Australia. It treated 30,000 people, performed a thousand operations and prescribed more than 10,000 pairs of glasses.
Fred Hollows became to be known as the 'wild colonial boy' of Australian surgery, partly because he had a deep love of the bush, and also because he had a wild temper.......
But Fred didn't think enough was being done for Aboriginal health. He was very outspoken on this issue.
"It is appalling. It is much worse than white health was in the worst times of the depression. It is appalling by third world standards."
........He heard about a war in Eritrea in Africa and how doctors there were trying to get training in eye surgery.
"Each year in Africa about two and a half million people go blind...and they just go blind...they sit around in their huts."
...
"I don't know if you can see that lens sitting on my right knee...that costs at least 140 dollars Australian. Hopefully, in Africa,it will be able to be produced for in the order of a few dollars."
But by 1989 Fred Hollows knew he wouldn't live to see all his ideas happen. He was dying of cancer.
....
"I have been lucky in that I've been alive at times when the things that I wanted to do were capable of being done."
....
Gabi Hollows in continuing Fred's work. Eye lens factories have been set up in Eritrea and other developing countries giving sight back to thousands of people.
....Hollows observed the spread of AIDS in contemporary African communities and he was concerned that AIDS would spread as vehemently through Aboriginal communities. Clearly Hollows infuriated some sections of the community with his comments, but his participation apparently did not cause widespread condemnation.
Death
Hollows died in Sydney in 1993 at the age of 64. The cause of his death was metastatic renal cancer primarily affecting his lungs and brain. He had been diagnosed with the disease six years earlier. Upon his death the Chief Minister of the ACT, Rosemary Follett, described Hollows to her parliamentary colleagues as "an egalitarian and a self-named anarcho-syndicalist who wanted to see an end to the economic disparity which exists between the First and Third Worlds and who believed in no power higher than the best expressions of the human spirit found in personal and social relationships."
Hollows was given a state funeral service at St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney, and was interred in Bourke, where he had worked in the early 1970s. He was survived by his wife (Gabi), and children Tanya, Ben, Cam, Emma, Anna-Louise, Ruth and Rosa.
... His eye team held their first clinic at the showgrounds, later relocating regular weekend clinics to Bourke District Hospital. They were welcomed in true Bourke spirit and provided services to other communities in the district, including Brewarrina, Cobar, Enngonia, Walgett, and Wilcannia. These vital screening and surgical services are continued today by the Eye Team from the Department of Ophthalmology at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney.
... Fred had a very special relationship with Bourke. ... Gabi and the family treasure these friendships and the deep ties they share with the local community.
Fred always had a passion for mountain climbing and studying at Otago University enabled him to make use of the spectacular mountainous backdrop. He often spent time climbing with friends on and around Mt Cook, New Zealand's highest peak
For him the mountain "put things into perspective - risks and skills, life and death, gives you the measure of problems and people."
Fred Hollows was a humanitarian in the fullest sense of the term: someone who acknowledged the limits imposed on us by nature but refused to accept the limits we impose on ourselves. The same optimism was reflected in his membership of the Communist Party during the '50s and '60s (a membership not mentioned in the film biography shown on the ABC last week).
Hollows had left the Communist Party before he became well known for his medical work, but he still had the attitude which says that the existing system deserves no special respect.
For example, he understood the term “aid” in the only way it makes any sense: as helping people overcome the obstacles that now stop them from standing on their own feet. So, when he wanted to aid overseas cataract victims, he didn't organise a one-off charity contribution; he set about helping the Eritreans and the Nepalese and the Vietnamese to produce their own lenses, without concern for the profit rates of Western companies. That is an approach that few Marxists -- and few real humanitarians of any persuasion -- will disagree with.
Fred Hollows' optimism, even when he knew he had terminal cancer, clearly derived from the view that the individual, unfortunately mortal, still has the potential to change the society into which she or he is born. His stubborn acting on that belief has already contributed to changing Australia and the world.
The Hon. Dr BRIAN PEZZUTTI: I had just been elected in 1989. The measure was brought forward with all sorts of changes that optometrists wanted at that time. They wanted to treat eye disease, they wanted to use lasers, they wanted to provide all sorts of medication, they wanted not to release their prescriptions, they wanted ownership only by optometrists and so on. It had a huge pile of conditions. At the time this was thought not to be in the public interest and so that great man Fred Hollows was invited along to give advice. Fred Hollows was a great friend of the Australian Medical Association. Honourable members will remember that at that time Fred Hollows had lung cancer.
... We asked Fred along to tell us what he thought of the bill. ........He was a new professor at the University of New South Wales, having come over from New Zealand. I had worked with Fred when I was a young doctor and I thought I would ring Fred and obtain some fearless advice because he was a fearless sort of fellow. So I brought him into the committee. We met in Ron Phillips' office, which is the Whip's office near the Legislative Assembly Chamber. Fred walked in obviously unwell. He had just had some of his lung excised. He was limping a little and puffing and blowing.
The Hon. Dr Arthur Chesterfield-Evans: Did he smoke?
The Hon. Dr BRIAN PEZZUTTI: He was a pipe smoker. I will never forget what happened. He came in and we reached the stage about managing prescriptions and he said: "I don't really give a damn about that sort of stuff, and ownership. Well, who cares?" When we reached the topic about using drugs Fred said, "Whatever you do, don't do it." I thought his response was rather unusual, and all of the other members of the committee were quite stunned by that very forthright statement.
And just as Gabi Hollows continues his work - so too (for mine) does Terri Irwin. I truly admire that lady - and her magnificent little daughter.
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